With guest-facing technology getting more complicated, hotels have to have the operational tools to back that up—otherwise, they open themselves up to gaps in the guest experience. And while having a robust system is key, hotels are also looking to add features that do what back-of-house tech does best: streamline operations, saving hotels on labor, costs and time.

“As guest-facing applications are being adopted more and more, if you don’t have a really good management plan and infrastructure in place for the back of the house, you can really set up expectations for guests that you don’t deliver on, which is almost worse than if you didn’t have any guest-facing application at all,” said Mark Jarman, president, Guestware.